Dan's Comments

sds: jeffmiller: We often suggest that a murderer is...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:22:42 -0500

jeffmiller:

We often suggest that a murderer is particularly awful if he kills someone despite their “plea to stop.” Does this really elevate a murder to an even worse plane? And is there actually a sizable subset of thoughtful murderers who halt their deed when the victim asks them to cease? “Really? I had no idea you were opposed to this strangulation. I’m so sorry. My mistake. Please forgive me. I’ll move along now. Have a nice day.”

This is clearly a hate-crime against a 10-year-old. Since the laws against general murder aren’t stringent enough, I think we should add 10-year-old boys to a protected class.

Jeff: No, it doesn’t elevate it past murder. But it might elevate it past manslaughter. Of course the prosecutor would call it “deliberate murder.” Of course, another phrase for “accidental murder” is “not actually murder.” If the guy you’re strangling objects to his stranglation, the “oh, we were just horsing around” argument gets weaker. (Additionally, if the guy you’re strangling is able to talk, you’re doing a bad job of strangling him.)

And SDS: If we have a rash of crimes against 10-year-old boys motivated by people who hate 10-year-old boys as a class, we can consider making them a protected class. And if we find certain state courts or state prosecutors that decline to prosecute the crimes against the 10-year-olds, it would make a lot of sense to add them to a federal hate crimes law.

jgh: missworld: This is so sad. I may a backwards hippie, country bumpkin, but I operate on the...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:05:00 -0500

jgh:

missworld:

This is so sad. I may a backwards hippie, country bumpkin, but I operate on the belief that anything that the government gives out for free is generally to be avoided. The government NEVER gives anything for free. For all we know, the flu shot could have some fucked up alien virus in it and 10 years from now we start sprouting tentacles out of our tits. Don’t laugh. I’ll be laughing at your tentacle tits when it happens.

So one statistical side effect from a medically necessary vaccination means we should avoid our shots?

You’re smarter than that.

jgh:

missworld:

This is so sad. I may a backwards hippie, country bumpkin, but I operate on the belief that anything that the government gives out for free is generally to be avoided. The government NEVER gives anything for free. For all we know, the flu shot could have some fucked up alien virus in it and 10 years from now we start sprouting tentacles out of our tits. Don’t laugh. I’ll be laughing at your tentacle tits when it happens.

So one statistical side effect from a medically necessary vaccination means we should avoid our shots?

You’re smarter than that.

When I was growing up, the mayor had a “barbecue” where he gave out “hamburgers.” But some of us saw the truth and realized this was actually the government’s way of distributing heart disease.

And don’t get me started on the “roads” and “national parks.”

robot-heart-politics: squashed: Does blaming the soldiers help...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:20:20 -0500

robot-heart-politics:

squashed:

Does blaming the soldiers help us ignore our own culpability?

I never said it was okay to blame the soldiers (in fact, I believe I said that it wasn’t) or ever said anything that would remotely imply we (the rest of us) are not also complicit. So I’m not really sure why you thought this would be a good jumping off point for your “We’re all guilty” speech. I was interested in addressing language that romanticizes and obfuscates the realities of war (i.e. war is often not about freedom at all, that civilians die, and that soldiers are more often than not there because of economics, not character), not a game of musical finger pointing.

“At least this soldier has the courage of her convictions”?

Again, you don’t know that. I know several people who signed up for the national guard in their state, being told they would never go to war, who fought tooth and nail not to go once they were told to pack their bags and head out. They went to war, some of them more than once, and I don’t know that they ever had any real conviction about what they were doing, other than that they had joined the military because of the benefits of the GI bill and they were forced into going because they were enlisted. So this statement? Just more empty romantic language.

I’m not interested in defending anyone. I’m making a statement that war is fucked up, and I’m tired of talking about it in these bullshit terms that gloss over just how fucked up it is.

Point well taken.

I didn’t mean to accuse you of blaming the soldiers—particularly as you explicitly did not. I wanted to respond to the the original killing children comment—but what you and others had written was worth keeping there. I parsed it poorly.

And you’re also right that “at least this soldier has the courage of her convictions” is too speculative. While some soldiers clearly are taking risks for something they believe in, I can’t know anything about the woman in the picture. It’s wholly possible that many are, like most of us, following the path of least resistance.

Baltimore passes crisis pregnancy center legislation requiring them to state they don't provide abortion or contraception (abortchat)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:08:33 -0500

Baltimore passes crisis pregnancy center legislation requiring them to state they don't provide abortion or contraception (abortchat):

catbus:

Crisis pregnancy centers in Baltimore must display signs stating they do not provide abortions or birth-control referrals under a measure approved by the City Council Monday night and thought to be the first of its kind in the nation.

Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who was lead sponsor of the initiative, called the measure a victory for women’s well-being. She cited a study by an advocacy group indicating that women have been misled at pregnancy centers that provide counseling, clothing and food for expectant mothers - but not abortions.

“It’s a step towards making sure that women have the information they need to make the right decision for their health and their future,” Rawlings-Blake said.

Nice work, Baltimore.

Though we disagree on abortion, this seems like an eminently reasonable law. There’s real value to providing food, clothing, and counseling for expectant mothers is a great thing—and allegations (founded or not) of deception make a mess of that.

"How did a man that does not understand what it means to be an American get elected President of the..."

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:07:46 -0500

“How did a man that does not understand what it means to be an American get elected President of the United States?”

- Complicated Shoes

Dear Complicated Shoes:

Since you seem to be an authority on the matter, what exactly does it mean to be an American? Enlighten me.

(via squashed)

holy fuck, was this serious

(via catbus)

I’m pretty sure it was serious. Also, I managed to avoid listing all the things it means to be an American like holding people indefinitely without trial.

Good intention does not equal good policy

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:28:38 -0500

sds:

The left spends so much time and energy crusading against this ethereal enemy called “climate change”—which isn’t even confirmed or agreed upon—and their supposed trump card is “doing what’s right for the future generations,” etc. Yet to solve healthcare they would heap piles and piles of new debt onto piles and piles of current debt, all for our kids and grand kids to pay off—that is, if this economic house of cards even lasts that long.

Not to burst any bubbles—but it might be time to lose the scare quotes on “climate change.” The science really is there. Sure, some people don’t believe it. But some people also believe in UFOs. I don’t have any desire to shut down honest debate—but the climate change deniers frequently aren’t arguing in good faith anymore.

The real climate change debate is “bad” vs. “really bad.” And there are some legitimate policy differences in there. But is it really helpful to pretend that the jury is still out on something that’s more or less a scientific certainty?

Listen to 'Shut Up, Weirdo' for 11/6/09

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:16:50 -0500

Listen to 'Shut Up, Weirdo' for 11/6/09:

jhnbrssndn:

frangry:

Topic: What would you do if you were a member of the opposite sex for a day?

Is this a trick question?

Same thing we do every day, Frangry. Try to take over the world.

jgh: tanya77: alanfm78: Seems like it wasn’t too long ago we...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:43:10 -0500

jgh:

tanya77:

alanfm78:

Seems like it wasn’t too long ago we were striking over this technology that “was years and years” away from becoming a reality. Yea.

Click above to read on.

Big, Major FU to the Theater Owners.

I don’t know anything about this issue so please educate me. What is wrong with releasing movies straight-to-TV (an OnDemand type service, I am assuming?) Yes, it would be put theaters out of business, but is there something wrong with providing consumers more options? Getting the movies at home sounds pretty convenient to me. Not asking rhetorically, as I know I am not seeing the whole picture. Please explain. What is the argument of the theater owners?

I believe the theater owner’s arguments are roughly the same as the Michigan Newspapers who were horrified at the idea that towns would post notices online. I think the argument goes something like: We like money. And we’re scared we’re obsolete.

Gay Stuff

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:18:42 -0500

jasencomstock:

OK! so we are like 0 for 30 on the ballot referendums. Most of the losses were in 2004, we have Prop 8 in California and 1 in Maine. The prop 8 mess, if you recall, first we blamed all the African-American voters, then it turned out that the team sucked ass and did a really bad job. So everyone was like, “well we did a crappy job on prop. 8, we could have won it.” Well now in Maine, as far as I can tell, the No on 1 campaign worked their ass off, had ample resources, and we still lost by 5-6%.

I would like to read or hear a good lessons learned debate on this, but apparently we do not have a winning message or method.

Now some gay activists (who are usually just shit throwers) think Obama/HRC &c. are to blame. I don’t think Obama helped Corzine or Deeds.

Should the pro gay marriage ads not be about attempting to appeal to fairness or family love being gay and straight? If not, what should the message be? No on 1 supposedly had a top notch GOTV effort, was it the off year nature that doomed us? and if so, if we run a ballot initiative overturning gay marriage bans in target states like California and Michigan, would we be successful?

Being the CEO of Gay, I want options, not questions, pontifications or worse- problems. What should we do?

Keep trying.

Look at the margins in the 30 losses. Lately, they’ve been really close. And as some states have allowed gay marriage and appear to still be on the map, maybe some of the “end of civilization” rhetoric will tone down.

Additionally, watch the rhetoric of the opposing side. Lately it’s been about the children. In other words, straight out discrimination doesn’t have the political clout it used to.

I love me some Obama, but this IS bad. I need to know more.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:15:14 -0500

robot-heart-politics:

needtherapy:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad. - Boing Boing

I’m trying to reserve judgment, but I’m not sure how this is defensible.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Hopefully everybody’s clear all the measures listed here (when not misconstrued) are consistent with current U.S. law?

jgh: WHY DON’T I HAVE A PC OR XBOX TO PLAY THIS...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:41:23 -0500

jgh:

WHY DON’T I HAVE A PC OR XBOX TO PLAY THIS GAME

FFFUFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Please don’t bring this game to my attention. If I don’t know about it, it can’t take over my life for a week or so.

jhnbrssndn: ericmortensen: lizlet: ericmortensen: mikehudack:...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:36:22 -0500

jhnbrssndn:

ericmortensen:

lizlet:

ericmortensen:

mikehudack:

ericmortensen:

Enjoy it America. This is what you get instead of universal health care.

Really? We don’t get universal health care because we build amphibious assault ships? I don’t think that’s fair. Not at all.

It’s entirely fair. And it’s not just about money. It’s also about political will. Health care would be nifty, but warships are required! Health care must be deficit neutral but killing machines can cost whatever is “necessary”. Catching up to the rest of the world’s health care is “risky” but fighting hypocritical never-ending, unwinnable wars that foster anti-American sentiment is never even questioned.

We don’t get universal health care because we’ve been convinced that perpetual war is “American” and taking care of each other is “communist.” Our priorities are seriously screwed up. And that’s why we get warships (and prisons and banker bailouts) instead of health care.

In addendum to this, I personally find the concept of making a warship out of the WTC both morbid and disturbing. Not to be totally hippie-dippy or anything.

Why settle for a metaphor for the endless cycle of violence, when you can have a literal representation?

I’m for universal health-care and all, but that’s one sweet-ass amphibious assault ship. I may re-examine my priorities. After all, why settle for a metaphor for the endless cycle of violence when we can have a literal representation?

Think of it as the world’s most dangerous bit of performance art.

Epic sweeping gender generalizations, I am full of them today!

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:22:06 -0500

(via jgh)

‘Cause you’re a woman.

"Furthermore, the people who are spending the most to care for their pets are not the ones abandoning..."

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:50:39 -0500

“Furthermore, the people who are spending the most to care for their pets are not the ones abandoning them, so I suspect those who would most benefit from a tax break for pet care (me) are those in a position to spend a lot on their pets and have a sufficient cushion that they can spend the money on pets and get some of it back when April rolls around. Until we’re a bit less conflicted on animal welfare, I’m happy to let responsible pet ownership be a largely private virtue.”

- Squashed

The arguments about what kinds of people do and don’t abandon their pets really doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny, although stereotyping is a super fun way of justifying an argument! People who wouldn’t normally abandon their pets (at a shelter, on the side of the road, in their former home) are doing so now because of unusual financial duress.

If you think we should simply raise taxes and put that money toward animal control and shelters, you still are raising taxes on non-pet owners in order to relieve the financial responsibilities of, for the most part, pet owners. You also are ignoring the fact that the overhead of running a shelter or keeping animal control going is far more than people simply taking care of their pets in-home, i.e. you’d need to raise taxes more to pay for the shelters than you would lose tax revenue by giving people a break. At least you’re still arguing to do something about it, though, instead of just shrugging your shoulders, saying “not my problem,” and moving on. (Which is essentially what Jeff is advocating.)

And I’m not really sure what general somewhat permissible animal cruelty has to do with looking the other way as more of it happens, but.

(via robot-heart-politics)

I was actually taking a much more less sympathetic position than Jeff. I wasn’t proposing funding for shelters. I was proposing funding for euthanasia clinics. Less euphemistically, I was proposing raising taxes to kill puppies.

The pet abandonment problem is really, really sad. And if I had infinite money, I would love to do something about it. But there are a lot of problems I would like to fix. But there is a lot of unnecessary suffering. And think the government should work to alleviate human suffering first. And if we’re looking at alleviating animals’ suffering, we’ve got to seriously think about how and why we distinguish between pet animals and food animals.

SLUTTY WALMART GREETER.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:40:40 -0400

jgh:

THAT WOULD BE THE MAGNUM OPUS OF “SLUTTY” COSTUMES.

Slutty slut-shamer. It’s a fine line to walk—but if you can pull it off, you revel in sexy, sexy hypocrisy.

A U Mich undergrad is reportedly going as a sexy Charles Darwin.

The Point I Should Have Made

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:33:50 -0400

jeffmiller:

southpol:

“The University of Central Florida, where Jordan is a freshman basketball player, has a $1.9 million contract with Adidas that requires all Golden Knight athletes to wear its shoes and apparel. That includes Jordan, son of Nike icon Michael Jordan.”

—

Marcus Jordan needs to get with the Central Florida and wear Adidas, not Nike — chicagotribune.com

Forget the controversy over Jordan. The shocking part of the story is that Adidas is paying $1.9 million to the University of Central Florida so that the team will wear Adidas shoes and apparel. This isn’t UCLA, or Duke, or Indiana. This isn’t the University of Florida. It’s the University of Central Florida.

There is an insane amount of money available in the shoe industry.

(via jeffmiller)

And an insane amount of money available to NCAA programs on the backs of talented kids who don’t get paid.

CBS pays the NCAA $545 billion to broadcast their basketball games. Per year. And let’s not even start on football…

Southpol makes exactly the point I should have made. As a good libertarian, I don’t care if private schools offer scholarships to athletes with the proviso that they don’t accept money for their play. But when public schools do this, we’re all complicit in the deal. Because these schools are established by the exercise of government power, denying athletes their market value is exploitation. And for the most part, it’s exploitation of an economically-vulnerable class. In light of the disproportionate racial composition of some of our most popular sports, this exploitation feels more than a little like racism. I don’t mean to suggest that this racism was ever intended by those who set up this system. But I wonder whether our indifference to the fairness of the arrangement has anything to do with race.

As I think more about this, I don’t think our indifference is a reflection of racism. It’s a reflection, I think, of ageism. We largely don’t care about the young. We let them fight our wars; we make them pay our debts. And we make them play games for our amusement.

Some of those numbers are wrong, right? The annual cost of the NCAA broadcast rights can’t be roughly on par with the Iraq War, can it?

College athletics is a complex enough topic that I’ll leave it aside. I’m happy enough to see billions of dollars going to education.

Surely I am the only one whose parent refuses to get a checking or savings account, right?

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:46:24 -0400

(via jgh)

Anxiety about banks probably started the day they invented banks. But…yeah. You may be the only one.

I don't mean to write about this to start drama or as a sympathy ploy.

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:19:36 -0400

jgh:

I am just thinking out loud. How do you fix your radar/spider-sense/judgment when you know it is lacking? If your dude-compass isn’t correct, how do you make it right?

I don’t actually have a real solution for that one … but if you ever find yourself thinking “I’m the only one who understands him,” that should be a clue to get out. You’re probably the only one who doesn’t understand him. Other triggers are, “My love will change him,” or “He hits me because he loves me.”

"Anyone who can lay out an iPhone along with its recent competitors (never mind those previous..."

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:17:17 -0400

“Anyone who can lay out an iPhone along with its recent competitors (never mind those previous generations of lame “iPhone-Killers” they presented in 2007 and again in 2008) and say with a straight face that the only advantage Apple has is its ability to make things look nice should be in politics (perhaps AM Radio), not blogging about technology.”

- The ‘Apple Backlash’ Myth

This article is so poorly copy-edited that I think I might be the only person who has read it. But it makes some great points.

(via marco)

Are you worried about the growing Marco.org backlash? After all, if something does pretty well for a while, there has to be a backlash, right?

Also, your rhetorical question about the doctor:

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:17:10 -0400

jgh:

I don’t care what reasons a doctor is being a doctor for, as long as he DOES A GOOD JOB. As long as he knows what he’s doing, he could be a doctor because he thinks body parts are cool looking for all I care.

Most people do their jobs for the money, not because of the special feelings it gives them in their tummies when they feel ~* so fulfilled *~.

Whether or not you view alternative certification as inferior, it is viewed as a way to “know what you’re doing.”

Incidentally, NPR did a thing today about a 5-year teaching college that had determined that students should get a regular BA for the first four years in something they want to teach and spend the last year doing the actual teaching. That seemed to work a whole lot better than some of the other teaching colleges that might or might not have been accredited. Math teachers with math degrees tended to do a lot better than math teachers with education degrees.